Paperback | August 2018 | RRP $ 49.99 | CSIRO Publishing
280 pages | 215 x 148 mm | Colour photographs, illustrations
After many years in the making, the long-awaited first definitive guide to Australia’s native bees is here, authored by one of the most erudite of Australia’s native bee experts, Terry Houston. Australian native bee scientists, naturalists, enthusiasts, and bee-lovers now have a resource to go to for learning about our incredible diversity of bees. Despite having an incredible diversity of native bees in Australia (an estimated 2,000 species), until now there has been no ‘go-to’ guide. Although scientific publications exist for some groups of bees, these are largely inaccessible, due to often being behind academic journal paywalls, as well as being difficult to understand for those outside of the field of native bee taxonomy.
The book is extremely well-structured, organised into two parts:
- 1) Overview of bees and their biology; and
2) The identification of bees.
In Part 1 we learn firstly—and importantly—what is a bee? This is followed by a section on their form and function, introducing readers to the necessary morphological terms that are a prerequisite for the identification of bees. Dr Houston then details the fascinating evolution and ecology of Australian native bees, including information about their diverse life-histories, nesting, foraging ecology and more. An incredibly useful section that concludes Part 1 details the practice of collecting and preserving bees. As a native bee scientist, I must stress that many finer-level identifications cannot be made from a photo alone. As readers will discover in Part 2, many of the diagnostic features require looking at a specimen under a microscope. One should not collect specimens frivolously of course, and numbers collected should be kept to a minimum and donated to museums.
Part 2—the identification of bees—provides a systematic coverage of the 58 genera in five families of Australian native bees and how to identify them. The guide includes a key for identification to family, then subfamily, then genus. Following the key is a more in-depth description of the genus’s identifying feature, as well as information about their biology, ecology, and distribution.
A dichotomous key—to key out a taxon—is presented, where you essentially follow a serious of paired questions, which eventually narrow you down to a single group. The lowest level of taxonomic resolution the guide offers is to genus. If you’re trying to key out to species, there are articles with published keys that focus on a narrower group to key out a species, and these are listed in the Bibliography. However, I must stress that a (disconcertingly) high number of species are not formally described and have no scientific name, and so will not be featured in such keys. This is a tragedy for the understanding and conservation of native bee biodiversity, and I hold incredibly high esteem for the few native bee taxonomists such as Dr Houston. The concluding sections of the book include a Glossary: an absolute must for anyone attempting to key out bees, since many of the terms are highly specialised to the field of entomology, and a Bibliography.
All of this interesting information into the lifestyles, evolution, and taxonomy of bees is accompanied by stunning photographs that showcase the wonderful forms, colours, patterns and shapes that the myriad of species exhibit.
No review is complete without some adding some caveats to one’s praises.
For the reader starting out in identifying bees, more photomicrographs accompanying and comparing diagnostic features in the keys to genera would have been very useful.
As a scientist, I like to know when I read a statement, where I can follow up the claim and learn more. Although this book does have a bibliography, for ease of use it would have been good if there was a reference section after each major section e.g. if after the section of the Euryglossinae, there was a reference list for the published articles relating to this group and their taxonomy (mainly authored by the renowned late Euryglossine expert Elizabeth Exley), and when a statement is made that requires a citation, it is accompanied by a superscript so the reader can then know directly where to look if they want to seek more.
Overall, Dr Houston has written a thorough, detailed guide to the wonderful diversity of native bees in Australia, and is a must have for anyone interested in native bees—from the amateur natural historian to the professional entomologist. I only wish this valuable resource had been published prior to the commencement of my PhD on native bees!
Kit Prendergast, native bee scientist